The experiment of poetry, as far as I am concerned, happens when the poem carries you beyond where you could have reasonably expected to go.

Hope is not optimism, which expects things to turn out well, but something rooted in the conviction that there is good worth working for.

Believe that a further shore is reachable from here.

Even if the hopes you started out with are dashed, hope has to be maintained.

Anyone with gumption and a sharp mind will take the measure of two things: what's said and what's done.

I can't think of a case where poems changed the world, but what they do is they change people's understanding of what's going on in the world.

If you have the words, there's always a chance that you'll find the way.

History says, Don’t hope On this side of the grave, But then, once in a lifetime The longed-for tidal wave Of justice can rise up, And hope and history rhyme

Poetry is always slightly mysterious, and you wonder what is your relationship to it.

All I know is a door into the dark

I have begun to think of life as a series of ripples widening out from an original center.

What has being a girl to do with anything if a person in properly qualified?' ... 'It's what you call prejudice, ' she said.

In life there are perfect moments. You cannot plan them - the very act interferes with the laws of the universe - but you must be ready to recognise them when they come.

I co-founded the DNC Veterans and Military Families Council in 2005.

As a playwright, I imagine that in one fashion or another I've been influenced by every single play I've ever experienced.

When you write for very young children what they want is something familiar and safe and stereotyped.

I've been through so many different political races.

A laughing Lear would be monstrous. Not so a laughing Romeo and Juliet.

When one does not feel life or death, it's the best future.

Adopt the character of the twisting octopus, which takes on the appearance of the nearby rock . Now follow in this direction, now turn a different hue.

It's a hard life sometimes and the biggest temptation is to let how hard it is be an excuse to weaken